In today's complex software environment, information may be represented in a myriad of different formats, each of which define a particular arrangement of data that can be processed and/or stored by a computer. For example, a letter may be represented by a format defined by a particular word processing application, such as Microsoft Word or WordPerfect; an image may represented by one of the many available graphics formats such as JPG and BMP; a song may represented by one of the many available digital audio formats such as music CD, MP3, WAV and AIFF; a video may represented by one of the many available digital video formats such as MPEG and DVD.
Even information pertaining to source code may be represented in different formats. For example, computer programming class information may be represented in a class file or database table format defined by a particular programming language, such as Java or ABAP, respectively, and it may also be represented in a standard format such as UML (“Unified Modeling Language”), which is provided by the Object Management Group and describes object-oriented systems. This standard UML format may be implemented through software such as IBM's Rational software (better known as “Rational Rose”), which stores UML model information in “.mdl” files.
Given the growing complexity of software development, it is not unusual for several components of a software application to be developed in different languages and runtime environments. Because of this complexity, it has become useful for developers to create tools that directly transform information pertaining to the software application between different formats, such as transforming class information to “.mdl” UML model files and HTML documentation.
However, existing transformation programs contain a lot of duplicate code and transformation knowledge, which leads to great redundancy and difficulty when enhancing or maintaining such programs. Further, some transformation programs do not exist for desired transformations between particular source and destination formats. With each additional format to be supported, the number or permutations of new transformation programs to be created increases dramatically. Mathematically speaking, if there are n source formats and m destination formats, n*m transformation programs would have to be implemented and maintained. Given the growing number of different formats in use today and being created, the current state of enhancing and maintaining such transformation programs can clearly hinder the application development process.
Accordingly, there is a need in the art for an improved system and method for transforming information between data formats.